12 classes – $15 each (If all classes are paid in advance, course discounted to $160)

Permaculture is “Earth Care, People Care, and Return of Surplus,” combining traditional and innovative methods that are sustainable and energy saving, enriching to the soil and all life. Design a system to feed your family, or complete additional short classes to earn your certificate and work as a consultant.

Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW covers permaculture history and ethics and goes into depth on the core concepts for creating sustainable systems by observing connections and capturing energy. Explore the energy transactions of trees, the roles of fungi, and the many functions of living soil. Learn pH, mineral availability, and enriching your soil with worm beds, weeds as repair tools, and compost fixing strategies. Study landscape effects on climate and temperate climate design for your home and landscape from kitchen gardens to main crops and food forests. This course prepares you to design a sustainable system for your yard or small farm in the Pacific NW.

Design your own lower maintenance garden and reap the benefits for years to come

Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW
12 classes – $15 each (If all classes are paid in advance, course discounted to $160)

Permaculture is “Earth Care, People Care, and Return of Surplus,” combining traditional and innovative methods that are sustainable and energy saving, enriching to the soil and all life. Design a system to feed your family, or complete additional short classes to earn your certificate and work as a consultant.

Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW covers permaculture history and ethics and goes into depth on the core concepts for creating sustainable systems by observing connections and capturing energy. Explore the energy transactions of trees, the roles of fungi, and the many functions of living soil. Learn pH, mineral availability, and enriching your soil with worm beds, weeds as repair tools, and compost fixing strategies. Study landscape effects on climate and temperate climate design for your home and landscape from kitchen gardens to main crops and food forests. This course prepares you to design a sustainable system for your yard or small farm in the Pacific NW.

Presented by the NW Permaculture Institute. Our instructors and staff studied permaculture with world renowned permaculture designer & instructor, Geoff Lawton, of PRI, Australia, and his students. We offer classes at low rates, as well as free film and lecture series to further educate our students and the community. NWPI works with homeless and low income families to provide education to those who would otherwise be unable to take a permaculture course. Scholarships are available on a limited basis for those with financial need. Contact us for information on applying, or on donating to our scholarship fund, or to support our free film and lecture series, nwpermacultureinstitute.org

Experts predict that by mid-century hundreds of millions of people will be uprooted as a result of sea level rise and an increase in extreme weather events, droughts and desertification. Little is being done to plan for the potential mass migration of millions of refugees who will be forced to cross national borders, nor the food shortages this will cause worldwide. According to the UN, there are already more environmental refugees in the world than political or religious refugees. The Pentagon now considers climate change a national security risk and the phrase ‘climate wars’ is being talked about in war-rooms. This film features a variety of leading scientists, relief workers, security consultants, and major political figures, including John Kerry and Newt Gingrich. All make a strong case that, whether human-caused or a product of nature, the changing climate is already creating humanitarian disasters and will inevitably lead to worldwide political instability. Filmed in Bangladesh, Tuvalu, China, Fiji, Chad, Sudan, Kenya, Maldives, Europe & the US, 86 mins.

Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share: Free Film and Lecture Series
Held in Salem every 4th Thursday @ 6:30pm (except November and December)

These qualities emerge from the dynamics of the forest as a whole system, not from any one or more of the elements that comprise the forest alone. To design productive edible ecosystems that express these same qualities, we must understand forest structures, functions, patterns, and processes, and use this knowledge wisely.

In this nine-day intensive course, you will dive deeply into the vision, theory, and practice of designing wholesome, dynamic, and resilient edible ecosystems using temperate deciduous forests as models. Dave Jacke and his teaching team will offer lectures, site walks, and experiential exercises to help you understand how the architecture, social structure, underground economics, and successional processes of natural forests apply to the design of edible ecosystems of all kinds. You’ll learn a variety of ecological design processes while designing a range of food-producing ecologies at the Feathered Pipe Ranch, while also providing detailed polyculture designs for an actual Public Edible Forest Garden Park, currently in the installation phase in Helena, MT. We’ll also engage with issues of garden management, economics, and the deep paradigmatic shifts required to succeed at co-creating “humanatural” landscapes and cultures. You will leave inspired and empowered to design food forests at home for yourself, and your friends, neighbors and clients.

INSTRUCTORS :

Dave Jacke is the lead author of the award winning two-volume book Edible Forest Gardens. Dave has been a student of ecology and design since the 1970s, and has run his own ecological design firm –Dynamics Ecological Design in Greenfield, MA – since 1984. Dave is an engaging and passionate teacher of ecological design and permaculture, and a meticulous designer. In addition to extensive teaching, he has consulted on, designed, built, and planted landscapes, homes, farms, and communities in the many parts of the United States, as well as overseas. A cofounder of Land Trust at Gap Mountain in Jaffrey, NH, he homesteaded there for a number of years. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Simon’s Rock College (1980) and a M.A. in Landscape Design from the Conway School of Landscape Design (1984). Read more at http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/.

Juliette Olshock, M.S., M.Ed., studied sustainable agriculture and permaculture design at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and completed a permaculture apprenticeship at the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute. She is an adjunct professor with Chatham University’s Food Studies program, teaching about sustainable agriculture, permaculture and forest garden design. She was instrumental in designing and implementing the Hazelwood Food Forest. She co-founded Pittsburgh Permaculture, LLC, an ecological design and education firm. Read more at http://pittsburghpermaculture.org/.

Jessica Peterson and Caroline Wallace founded Inside Edge Design, LLC, based in Helena, Montana. Together with Dave Jacke, Inside Edge Design co-created the design for the 6th Ward Garden Park, the first public forest garden to utilize Dave’s design framework. They continue to work on the Park’s planning and implementation while offering a range of professional ecological and social design services. Read more about Inside Edge Design at www.insideedgedesign.com.

Accommodations include three organic, locally-sourced meals a day and use of all amenities – bathhouse, sauna, hot tub, as well as the Feathered Pipe Ranch facilities and grounds

OUR EDUCATION SITE: FEATHERED PIPE RANCH – Our education site is one of the oldest centers for conscious living and yoga retreats in the country. Surrounded by millions of acres of forest and mountains, your intensive experience delving into edible forest design systems will be complemented by the ability to “lounge, stretch, laugh, stroll, and savor the gift of releasing everything you don’t need…” as the Feathered Pipe Ranch’s website so aptly describes.

There are numerous private or shared lodging options, from luxurious, chalet-style rooms to tents, tipis and yurts nestled in the surrounding forest. After course registration, we will contact you to confirm your lodging preference.

Fall is one of the most spectacular times to visit Montana. Days that are still warm and very cool nights are the norm. The fall colors, and the crisp clean air will be something you remember!

PAYING FOR THE COURSE – We have been able to reduce the cost of this course to $1,580-$1,880 on an income-based sliding scale and will still be able to offer scholarships.

SCHOLARSHIPS – Payments over $1,580 will be added to the existing scholarship fund! If you are in need of a scholarship, please submit a letter (as a .pdf, please) in which you answer the following questions to InsideEdgeDesignLLC@gmail.com:

Why do you want to take this course? What do you hope to get from it?

What do you plan to do with what you learn in this course? What are your hopes and dreams as a teacher of permaculture?

Are there specific areas on which you would like to focus your teaching, in terms of topic areas, audiences, regions of the country/world?

DEPOSIT AND PAYMENT IN FULL – A $500 deposit is required upon registration, with payment in full due by September 2, 2015. $250 of the deposit is non-refundable.